JMeter 5.2 has been released!

Apache has released it’s newer version of JMeter recently on 6 Nov 2019 with new features, many enhancements & bug fixes.

There are a lot of changes in the latest JMeter release including product improvements and bug fixes compared with the previous version of JMeter 5.1.

Whats new in JMeter5.2?

1.New Protocol:

New Sampler ‘Bolt Request’ and new config element ‘Bolt Connection Configuration’ are added in JMeter 5.2 to make performance testing of the databases with Bolt protocol.

The protocol is statement oriented, allowing a client to send statements, each consisting of a single string and a set of typed parameters. The server responds to each request with a result message and an optional stream of result records.

Firstly You need to enter the connection information like URL, Username and Password to your neo4j database.

On the ‘Bolt Request’ tab you can configure query’s parameters and select True/False value in case you want to record query results or not.

2.New Post Processor:

New Post Processors’ component ‘JMESPath Extractor’ is added and allows using JMESPATH (http://jmespath.org/) as a new technology to extract data from JSON.

Example: You can now use Dummy Sampler to create Response Data.

Then add data to ‘JSON JMES Extractor’

After running a request – verify your ‘View Results Tree’ listener.

To get more data about JMESPath query language please visit http://jmespath.org/

3.New Setting for Recording:

New setting ‘Recording’s default encoding’ HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder.

There is also a change in the ‘HTTP(S) Test Script Recorder’. When the user selects ‘Prefix’, in the previous version of Jmeter it put the prefix before the number, but in the version 5.2 the prefix is set behind the number, which may be a better option not to make a mistake with sorting in reports etc.

4. New Assertions:

Assertions’ component ‘JMESPath Assertion’ is added. This option allows user to perform assertion on JSON documents content using JMESPath. First, it compare data with JSON format and fail or not according wit it. Then, option will search for specified path, using JMESPath syntax. And if JMES path exists in the document – validation for expected value is requested. If you want to check for nullity, use the ‘Expect null’ checkbox.

New ‘XPath2 Assertion’ is added. The XPath2 Assertion tests a document for well formedness. Using “/” will match any well-formed document, and is the default XPath2 Expression. The assertion also supports boolean expressions, such as “count(//*error)=2”.

5. JDBC Enhancements:

New ‘Preinit Pool’ field is added to ‘JDBC Connection Configuration’ Config Element with (true/false) available options where user can choose to pre-initialize the JDBC connection pool.The default option is “false”.

New Field ‘Limit ResultSet’ is added to ‘JDBC Request’ sampler to only fetch a certain number of rows from the database (the result set of a select query).

This enhancement will be useful for users who are interested in the time it took the database to run the query, and not interested in the time it took the client (e.g. JMeter) to fetch the result set.

6. New ‘Same user on each iteration’ checkbox is added for Thread Group: and ‘Scheduler’ checkbox is renamed to ‘Specify Thread lifetime’ :.

When you select checkbox ‘Same user on each iteration’ and use HTTP Cookie Manager – cookies which you get in the first response will be used for the following requests.

Example:

If ‘Same user on each iteration’ checkbox is unchecked – cookies won’t be used for the following requests:

7. StringtoFile()

You can write text to the file using StringtoFile() function. It will come handy to write some log info the file. It supports append too.

8. Non-functional changes which relate to code infrastructure of the JMeter such as migration from subversion to Git and Switch build action from Apache Ant to Gradle are performed. This is a very significant addition for the JMeter community, which has been heavily anticipated by the development community for several years.

9. Fixed issue in JMeter HTTP sampler when it was configured with proxy with authentication (Bug 62672). So when user used proxy with authentication JMeter sent requests twice (the first one for get proxy authentication method and the second with correct authentication method).

10. Fixed issue Bug 63906– NPE for InfluxDB backend listener during failover testing.

For know problems and work around for JMeter 5.2 ,see here.

References:

https://jmeter.apache.org/changes.html

https://dev.to/qainsights/what-s-new-in-apache-jmeter-5-2-1hah